Immediate Impact: Notre-Dame and Chartres

Notre-Dame.

Saint-Denis had an immediate impact on major church-building projects throughout northern
France. One of the most important appeared in nearby Paris, where the new cathedral of Notre-Dame was begun in the 1150s. The cylindrical columns and other elements in the nave can be recognized immediately as inspired by the architecture of the abbey. But in comparing the two churches, one is struck by the differences. Notre-Dame is enormous. The interior space rises to a height of about 108 feet—the height of a ten-story building. In its original twelfth-century state (remodeled in the thirteenth century and partially restored in the nineteenth) it was composed of four levels: an arcade supported by those monumental columns; a gallery that created a second-story aisle; above that, a series of circular openings in the wall that corresponded to the zone of the pitched...